It’s that spooky time of year. With Halloween and Samhain coming up in a few days, it’s time to talk about ghost stories again. This time I’m joined by the author of Grovedaughter Witchery: Practical Spellcraft and The Sisters GrimmoireBree NicGarran as we talk about our personal experiences with the paranormal. Like last year, this is an extended, hour long episode.
Oh, and I complain about deer for a minute in there. Because deer are annoying.
Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “The Quest of Alomar/Open Skies,” “So I Said It,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn)
Want to hear @breelandwalker and I talk about ghosts for an hour? Because this is us talking about ghosts for an hour.
This was so incredibly fun to do! I always love talking shop and telling ghost stories, and we got to do both.
Also, this was the first time I’ve really told the story of The Thing From The Closet in its’ entirety outside of my very immediate circle. It was a little scary to relive it, but also cathartic. And validating, in a way, since I was able to get confirmation that it was not in fact sleep paralysis.
Although I still kind of wish it had been sleep paralysis. Or a possum…. 😅
Check out the episode for all the spooky scary details!
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here’s my take on himalayan pink salt: it tends to be listed as associated with love and friendship and positivity because it’s pink, but do you know why it is pink? because of the high iron content in it. iron, as in blood and rusted swords. think of it: blood salts. warding against fae tricksters, perhaps a blood substitute for some workings, an ingredient for binding oaths and for curses, a powerful but personal protector. strength, revenge, rawness. nothing wrong with the original associations, just a thought. i personally wouldn’t consider it as strong a purifier/energetic cleanser due to iron technically being an impurity
here is your gentle reminder that there are dandelions growing through cracks in the sidewalk. there is a fence lizard on the porch who is growing a new tail. there are trees growing through an abandoned house, branches tearing through the ceiling, ferns carpeting the floor. there is life pushing forward, pushing through.
An important flipside to naming a whole swath of Haitian Vodou as fraudulent is to recognize when we repeat over and over that the asson is always a fraud, it’s just about money, etc is that we are not really maligning who we think we are maligning.
If we unpack this a bit, these words look like they are being used to try and shut down a conversation..which indeed they are. A closer look gives us a deeper message.
If we say ‘manbo and houngan asogwe are frauds and will initiate anyone who pays them’, what we are really saying is that Haitians are untrustworthy, are people who seek to exploit others, and that they will disregard religious ethics to make a dollar. This reinforces the caricature of Haitians as conniving, malicious folks out to harm people…which is one of those persistent and ugly dogwhistles of white supremacy.
Further, we are making sweeping, blanket statements that tell Haitians that their history is invalid and that it doesn’t matter and that we really know that their spiritual and religious beliefs are just for show or are somehow lesser. Haitian Vodou has been derided as primitive and backward for a long time, and reinforcing those stereotypes by speaking over what is a cultural hallmark is, at best, insensitive. It puts us as an individual in a position of being more important than the whole…and, if there is anything that is un-Haitian, it’s that.
If we say that ‘real Vodou’ or ‘true Haitian Vodou’ is only for XYZ class of people, period, we are stripping Haitians, both individually and as groups, of their autonomy, both personal and spiritual. Haiti and Haitians get spoken over a LOT out in the world, and it’s incumbent that non-Haitians not repeat colonial-overseer patterns. Haitians don’t need folks to gate-keep for them; they are perfectly capable of doing that for themselves.
Digging a little deeper into making broad and sweeping statements about spirits and people, we come to this fork in the road, essentially. Either we believe the spirits have the autonomy to do what they will, or we do not. Either we believe the spirits can make their own choice–even/especially when we don’t understand,or we do not. Either the lwa are capable spirits who see bigger and broader than we can, or they are not. Either Haitian Vodou is a balanced religion as dictated by the lwa, or it is a human-focused construction only where we are the center of all our actions. There is no having things both ways.
So, it’s important to think we really deeply about what we say, the attitudes we project, and what we really mean when we discuss our history and our present.
This is where the asson comes from and from what we who have the asson descend from:
The commentary is flawed at times, but this is asson lineage Haitian Vodou in Haiti. The calendar has changed, but this is unbroken–asson lineage Vodou is done the exact same way now. We sing the same songs, trace the same veve, utilize the asson in the same way to communicate that, no matter how we found our way here, nou menm la.
And, as towke asson/toke asson is utilized in the first video to ascertain that the holder is empowered to use it, towke asson is used the same way here; to prove the validity of the initiation of new priests in a temple full of houngans and manbos. This is the language of the asson, passed to assure the bonds created are thorough and valid. Anyone who passes through a djevo is taught how to make the asson ‘speak’, and anyone who claims to be a manbo or a houngan can be challenged to respond and prove that they are who they say they are.
The asson held Haitians in Diaspora together, which reflects a reason the asson lineage is so large and widespread. This is a video of a maryaj lwa ceremony from 1989, filmed in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
This is an asson lineage ceremony for Damballah Wedo and Loko in the Bronx in 1989.
This is an asson lineage ceremony in Jacmel, Haiti in 2016.
This is what is being called fake. These are the people who are being called frauds.
This an asson lineage ceremony in Haiti, featuring a possession by Bossou.
This is an antre kanzo ceremony in an asson lineage house in Jacmel, Haiti featuring Ogou coming down in possession (note the machete and the targets).
This is a fet Kouzen in the house I was made in, in Jacmel, which, as noted over and over and overrrr, is an asson lineage house.
This is tcha-tcha vodou, or Deka Vodou, in Lakou Souvnans/Souvenans in Haiti. this is not asson lineage vodou, but it is Haitian Vodou and also quite real….and utterly gorgeous.
Also Lakou Souvnans, one of my favorite songs.
It’s easy to talk about things being fake, but it’s very different to look at the depth and breadth of what is being described as fake. This is real stuff with real communities behind it, not just pictures on Instagram.
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